Blow Your Mind Open

Special Note: Please don't read the description after the poem until you have your own thoughts of what each aspect means. This piece is meant to expand your imagination. Build your own ideas first before building off my actual thoughts. Prepare to open your mind!

Open Your Mind

By Josh Watkins

Chocolate rivers flow from the serenity of an eagle’s cliff,

The taste of key-lime pie lingers on my lips.

Rare is the wind that carries the flagship’s sail,

Enthralled by the complex vision of the artist’s easel.

An epic turned tragedy by a lion’s roar,

For words confound emotion, but the sword smites the heart.

Amber waves of grain cover the camel’s back,

And fruited sands conceal the diamond’s glow.

A shuttle on a star cooks an omelet well,

Bacon eases the tension of even the giant’s nerves.

The man whose coat shines is ruled by the man whose house is made of stone,

And whose floors are colder than ice,

Yet his path is constructed by beauty’s blissful attraction.

A blue shirt destroys gloom’s dull allure,

Foreseeing the black army swarm the green sea.

A leprechaun’s hat conceals the fire about to ensue,

Yet the gold is as safe as a roach in a monk’s sanctuary.

Poison barbs from the writer’s pen,

Shatter the mirrors of time while distorting the chronicle’s hue.

The doe’s fawn makes the red berry bleed,

And the sandman’s bag is full of rocks.

Algorithms know no numbers, only letters and trolls,

Weary is the spoon whose course no silver flows.

Shoelaces taste like Twizzlers coated in sugar,

A typhoon’s waves hold the key to the monkey’s laugh.

Toe-jam and peanut butter make a good sand-witch,

Yet she is saltier than a soft pretzel in July.

Throngs of thieves thwart the gumshoe’s thoughts,

Bands of bees bite the donkey’s bum.

This tale ends where the end begins to end the beginning.   

The idea for this piece came from a sporadic event that happened during my Christian internship. A fellow intern name Julian Taylor decided to bombard another fellow intern (Grace Wang) with random texts and got others (including myself) to participate in it. For those that know me, I like to be random at times and I thoroughly enjoyed messing with Grace. Then I got the idea to let the randomness in my mind flow and put it on paper...yet it wasn't all random as you will find out.

There are three aspects to this piece. The first is that some series of lines have a unified thought, meaning they describe one thing with a series of pictures. The second is that one line describes one thing, but has no connection to anything else. The third and final aspect is that some of these lines have absolutely no meaning and can be whatever you want. Now that you know the code, let's see how you fared with "expanding your mind."

Chocolate serenity flows from the eagle's cliff: This is just a few of my favorite things meshed in a poetic rhyme. Chocolate, eagle, and serenity. Another way I saw it was a giant, sparkling, chocolate waterfall flowing from a cliff where an eagle calls home. Hey it's my imagination, I'll do with it as I please.

Key Lime Pie: I was craving key lime pie.

Flagship and Artist's Easel: A vast and mighty warship, the kind in the days of the pirates, fresh out of the dock, and it's the flagship of a fleet bound for war, but the captain halts the fleet. The wind is absent. What caused an adrenaline raging war monster to halt? The complex vision of the Artist's easel. The captain saw the beauty in the sky created by the setting sun colliding with the sea. God's artistic eye for creating the beauty in a simple sunset, halted even the mightiest life-taking force.

Epic turned tragedy by lion's roar: Epic and tragedy are both literary types. The Illiad and Odyssey are epics and Oedipus Rex is a tragedy. A lion's roar is strong, powerful, meant to be feared. This line means that the best of things are turned to the worst of things by the mightiest voice around. The roar of the critics, the crowd, and the people. Governments have been overthrown, empires have been toppled, and harmony has been shattered.

Words/emotion sword/heart: Emotion expresses itself and sometimes there are no words to describe that feeling and using words may only make the emotion worse (hence the roar). However, words are powerful and can take the place of a physical sword. Words can damage the heart.

Camel/diamonds: This was a totally random way to describe the back of a camel...or the amber waves of grain are the plants that cover a mountain (camel's humps) which contains fruited sands (crushed minerals) that bury diamonds deep in the earth where the sun light can't reach them and reveal the diamond's shining power.

Shuttle, Omelet, bacon, giant: These are facts of wisdom. If you want an omelet cooked quickly and well, take it on a space ship and land on a star. The heat from a star will cook an omelet well. Bacon is so good that even an angry giant will calm down if you give him it.

The man whose coat shines + next two lines: This is a complex portrayal of a knight. Shiny coats of armor are what knights wear. The man whose house is made of stone is a king in his castle. The knight only has one path; to rescue a damsel in distress (beauty's blissful attraction).

Blue Shirt/Black Army/Green Sea: I wanted to use color to make simple things seem profound. Blue is an amazing color. The sky is blue, the sea (depending on where you are) is blue, the base of a hot fire is blue, most babies eyes start out blue, etc. So someone who is down notices a person wearing a blue shirt can't help but smile. Blue is awesome. In this case it is a sad little boy wearing a blue shirt, but he sees a colony of ants (black army) racing into the grass (green sea) and it totally makes his day.

Leprechaun/Monk's sanctuary: Leprechaun's are supposed to have red hair and when they get angry (like someone stealing their gold) I imagine it bursting into non-quenching flames, but his hat hides that. As far as I know, no one has ever acquired a leprechaun's gold. Roaches are among the world's most loathed bugs, but monks believe in the quality of all life, therefore any living thing that enters their sanctuary will not be harmed. So a leprechaun's gold is extremely safe.

Poison/Time/Chronicles: Like I said before, words are powerful. Not all good comes from them, even writing them down. Hateful and deadly words can be written and because they are, they can change people's opinions (changing the outcomes of history) and in doing so, mess up a perfectly sound chronology by turning it from a colorful hope to a black outcome.

Doe's fawn/Sandman: A baby deer eats a strawberry and its juice flows out. What is sand? Crushed rock. So if you think about it, the sandman's bag is truly full of rocks...maybe some un-crushed ones ended up in his bag hence the nightmares...imagination is a wonderful thing.

Algorithms: My experience with these is that they are mostly annoying symbols and Greek letters that you spend hours trying to solve hence the trolling of your mind.

Weary spoon: Think about it. If you have a stainless steel spoon, it is used and washed every week (maybe every day) therefore it is weary. But a silver spoon will be kept in a set, most likely in a felt case behind glass.

Shoelaces of Twizzler flavor: This is just silliness inspired by Shel Silverstein's poem If the World Was Crazy. He says he'd wear licorice shoes if the world was crazy, so I imagined sugar coated Twizzler shoelaces.

A typhoon's waves/monkey's laugh: Monkeys love mischief. They are usually in the vicinity of danger, but never close enough to be harmed. So I imagine a typhoon destroying beach houses and the monkeys screeching in terror or howling with laughter. A little dark I know, but hey it could be truth.

Toe-jam/soft pretzel: This is playing with play-on words. Toe-jam is an actual disease, but here it sounds like a spread that a vile creature would eat (a witch) and you put it on a sand-witch (sandwich or witch covered in sand). Yet this witch, even though sandy, is salty (grumpy or bitter). To describe how salty, I used the soft pretzel in July image. Those are scrumptious  by the way.

Throngs of Thieves and Bands of Bees: This is alliteration at it's finest. Alliteration is where the beginning syllables of most words in a single sentence sound the same. In this case I took two simple pictures and put them into alliteration. Thieves eluding a detective trying to find them and bees harassing a donkey.

Now after your mind has been put to the most extensive labor it has in a long time, the biggest puzzle comes in the last line. I'm going to leave the mystery of this line for you to solve. Here is your only hint: some of the stuff in that line is just noise and will help you narrow down the meaning if you eliminate it.

I had a lot of fun writing this and could write another one ten times longer. But I would need motivation to do so. Remember, imagination is a terrible thing to waste. With all the technology trapping today's kids and the lack of help from parents who allow their children to be consumed by it, it's hard to use something so magical. Imagination leads to dreams. Dreams lead to hope. Hope leads to striving. Striving leads to success. Success leads to reality.